Study: GMO food causes organ disruption in animals

David Gomez, 6th October 2011

It seem as if those who are vehemently opposed to genetically modified (GM) food aren’t crazy after all.

To be sure, a recently published research paper claims the intake of GM-based food can lead to substantial organ disruptions in rats and mice.

According to Natural News, the paper - which is based on 19 separate studies - concludes the disruptions occur primarily in the liver and kidney.

"[However], other organs may be affected too, such as the heart and spleen, or blood cells," the paper states.

Perhaps the most damning blurb from the six-author paper is the results section which describes the overall results of the study.

"Several convergent data appear to indicate liver and kidney problems as end points of GMO diet effects in the above-mentioned experiments. This was confirmed by our meta-analysis of all the in vivo studies published, which revealed that the kidneys were particularly affected, concentrating 43.5% of all disrupted parameters in males, whereas the liver was more specifically disrupted in females (30.8% of all disrupted parameters)."

One the biggest problems the paper illustrates is that of the 19 GMO feed studies they analyzed, only two were 90 days in length. These were non-GMO industry studies, meaning, the GMO industry exploits studies that go on for less than 90 days - sometimes only a month long - to determine whether a GMO food is safe for consumption.

The authors also point that 90 days in a scientific setting is not even enough time to realistically determine if GMOs are safe to use as animal food. And if scientists are saying that about the current GMO safety studies from the industry, then there is no way the GMO industry could possibly know if their animal feed is toxic or not.

Yet the GMO soybean and corn used in the trials "constitute 83% of the commercialized GMOs" that are currently consumed by billions of people. It may be debatable whether or not GMOs are safe for the consumption of living animals, but it is clear that the concerns anti-GMO activists have harbored for the last decade are legitimate.

It is also unclear if the organ problems originate from the GMO plants themselves or the pesticides that the companies use on their GMO plants.

Still, the most important thing that the scientists say in the paper is that the GMO industry does not test their foods in a proper scientific way:

"We can conclude, from the regulatory tests performed today, that it is unacceptable to submit 500 million Europeans and several billions of consumers worldwide to the new pesticide GM-derived foods or feed, this being done without more controls (if any) than the only 3-month-long toxicological tests and using only one mammalian species, especially since there is growing evidence of concern."

It appears that scientific opinion is slowly turning to the side of the anti-GMO activists.